The Pain of Mother Theresa
Our celebrity today is Mother Theresa. I was going to write about Michael Vick’s animal brutality. However, I changed my mind after reading the September 3, 2007, Time article The Secret Life of Mother Teresa! There is a soon to be released book titled, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (Doubleday).
It will be interesting to see what the world does with this Time article and the upcoming book. Both reveal Mother Theresa’s 50-year battle with faith. Letters written by this world famous servant of God reveal that for most of those years she “felt” spiritual “dryness,” “darkness,” “loneliness” and “torture.”
What most strikes me in reading the article and her quoted comments (mostly from letters written over the years to her spiritual confessors and superiors) is the attention given to suffering—Jesus’ suffering, the suffering of the poor and Mother Theresa’s own suffering—and the judgment of herself that accompanied her faith “crisis”. Is there is any surprise that in a religion that emphasizes suffering and judgment, suffering and judgment would show up?
One lesson I have learned in my never ending “Waking Up Fabulous!” journey is to always remember to love me and accept me no matter where I am.
A freeing choice for Mother Theresa could have been to admit her “darkness” without beating herself up and judging herself as unworthy, un-favored or a hypocrite. What if she would have decided to love herself as her God loves her? If she was unpracticed at loving herself then maybe this would have been a great prayer: “Dear Loving and Heavenly Father, how can I learn to love myself and accept myself like You Love and accept me?” If her crisis was one of doubt, then a good prayer would have been, “Dear Loving and Heavenly Father, how can the darkness be lifted that I may experience your presence?” A good question will bring to the heart an answer that the mind cannot access. A good question opens the heart and allows for answers to come from God/Universe through the soul. Judgment clogs the channels. It makes us our perception of ourselves the center of attention. Because no two things can occupy the same space at the same time; judgment takes space from God. God/Universe works through love and the love of creation. When we eliminate judgment there is more room for Love to surface.
True self-love is the final frontier. When we learn to really Love starting with ourselves, the entire planetary experience will shift. It is impossible to truly Love self and not know God. However everyday people claim to Love God and treat themselves and others poorly—with hostile judgments and shame.
When we remember first to love ourselves in times of difficulty this is a way of loving God/Universe. When we learn to allow our feelings to come up, and to love and accept ourselves through the process, we are treating ourselves with the level of care that is the Loving nature of the Universe. Judgment blinds us and breaks the spirit. Get rid of the judgment and the feeling of Oneness grows.
When we allow a painful feeling without judging it or ourselves, this supports these feelings in moving “through” us, like water moving down hill. Accepting a feeling doesn’t mean we have to “buy it” as real, nor does it have to be a statement about who we are. A feeling is just that…a feeling. Just because you feel fear under a certain set of circumstances doesn’t mean that you have to claim fear as your identity. Feeling fear is simply the experience of feeling fear.
When we accept a feeling without attaching our identity to it, we stay flexible and allow the feeling of the moment to shift and dissolve or change into a new feeling. We can even learn to “guide” our feelings into better feelings.
If we give up resisting our feeling or trying to keep them at bay we are free to lovingly question and explore them. We do not have to be afraid of what having such feelings says about us. To not resist your feeling does not give irresponsible permission to unleash emotion at others. Rather it is an invitation to learn the art of watching your feeling, understanding them and learning from them. We can even learn to appreciate feelings and trust there is valuable healing information in them. For instance, if you find yourself jealous or afraid, this information lets you know you have stored confusion and hurt that needs more loving attention.
Acknowledging your feelings and loving yourself through the process eliminates the negative pressure build-up that comes with trying to keep feelings from surfacing or expressing. The more we try to keep something at bay, the more effort and focus it takes to keep it at bay and the more stress gets locked into our bodies with this effort.
Secrets are the worse. They are like the joke that instructs you to not think about pink elephants. All our energy rushes to what is being hidden, denied or ignored. Suddenly all you can think about is pink elephants. Denial actually creates more focus, more pain, more tension, more stress.
More self-love is the answer to every problem we face. Self-love has no conceit in it, nor is it arrogant or haughty. Self-love is the true mirror image of our love of God and all else.
I trust that Mother Theresa was a wise woman. However self-condemnation supports a sense of separation from God/Universe. How can we condemn ourselves and not judge the hand that made us? Self-Love heals separation and allows the individual heart to reconnect to the ONE. There is nothing on the other side of God/Universe. All appearance to the contrary is illusion. Deepening your Self-Love is a way of learning this lesson.
We all know we can use more self-love. I encourage you to begin today loving yourself more and celebrating opportunities to give yourself more self-appreciation.
Fabulous Me to Fabulous You,
Tina